Swakopmund

Wednesday, July 8, 2009
First of all I need to start off with great news! Many of you are familiar with my involvement with an in-depth journalism project with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism looking at ethanol’s impacts in the Great Plains. Before I left Nebraska for Namibia, one of the last meetings I had with a professor from my university was with Carolyn, one of the two professors managing the project, and she asked me to be the representative for the print side’s application form for the Society of Environmental Journalist’s student competition series. We later learned one had to be a journalism major to be a representative, but regardless, my friend Mimi was the representative, we submitted the publication and won FIRST PLACE in the Outstanding Student Reporting category! There will be an award ceremony in Madison, WI, at the next SEJ conference, but sadly I’ll be over here in Africa and won’t be able to accept the medal and cash prize personally. I enjoyed my time at their last conference at Stanford University last year.
Here is the write-up Lincoln Journal Star did on the award: http://journalstar.com/articles/2009/07/09/news/local/doc4a5638cf0ad84148326569.txt
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A lot of exciting and interesting things have occurred the last few days. I’m still loving Namibia and living in Windhoek. I’ve been so fortunate to meet the people I’ve crossed paths with while traveling to many places in such a short period of time. My work at WWF is still going well and everyone is finally settling into the new office.
Rubber is starting to hit the road with my future survey work that will start after I return from my sister’s wedding in August. I’ll be networking with professors from the Great Plains and South Africa in the process with at least one maybe two papers being published in the process, which will greatly help with grad school applications process. The professor from South Africa is looking at the impact of bush meat trade in conservancies, and the WWF component is going to look at land use economic returns of wildlife vs. other land uses. Together we’re going to have a survey that will be big, but will provide some great new insight into the returns to conservancies. I’ll also venture into the Northwest region of Namibia –my favorite one so far.
Many great synergies are forming all over the place. I’m so fortunate to have stumbled across the community based natural resource management development model! Its truly inspiring work for me to be involved with at this point in my life.
As further talks and meetings develop, I’ll be sure to keep everyone posted!
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Looking back the last few days, I think it’s safe to say my friend/colleague Erica and I get an A+ for living life! So many stories to tell from a short 2.5 day July 4th weekend. Life can be pretty tough here in Namibia and it makes one want to throw oneself out of planes! 8D
I’d like to start with the more recent stories including the ant incident last night before I go into my Skawkopmund adventures.
A few nights ago, my colleague Erica and I just came back from my favorite German influenced grocery store and we were cooking diner and preparing our lunches for the next day. We unloaded all our groceries on the counter, started boiling pasta, carrying on with conversation, and when Erica returned to the kitchen at one point, the look of terror on her face said it all when we noticed a HORDE of small black ants making their way into our boss’s house. What a deal. And they were carrying their little babies in white cocoon sacs up the side of the house too.
I immediately thought… this is going to be a long night! Luckily things never were completely out of control –even now.
Erica has worked in Zambia in the past and has many ant stories and to say the least –she’s not a fan of the creature, even though we’re both extreme naturalists. We’re also in a house where we barely know where things are in the kitchen and have no idea what kind of resources we could utilize during an invasion. So it was a rush to locate bug sprays, duct tape, ect. or whatever we thought would prevent our Avis house from being an ant colony. We had no luck finding bug spray. And we needed drastic measures.
Our initial question was whom could we call to help us? The boss was gone on a trip somewhere in Zambia and South Africa. All the stores with bug spray close around 7 and we were looking at 8 PM on our watches. We couldn’t find any bug spray and diner was cooking, while the ants were making a B-line for the kitchen. LOL
Just imagine thousands of tiny small black ants climbing up the side of the house and into all the cracks of the front door and a metal handled industrial broom I was using sweeping them all into little piles that looked like mini black sand dunes. We both kept sweeping and running outside of the house surveying the ant attack.
What else could we do but lay a duck tape trap all the way across the floor and half way up the walls in the main entry way! Duck tape can solve many problems and Erica’s idea did work for a while. We quickly singled out which colleagues to call. Luckily, Helge, an extremely resourceful WWF staffer who has run many camping and hunting trips professional in Namibia, answered his phone and had a can of DOOM he was willing to bring over to the house. He saved the day and brought the can over.
So eventually, we sprayed enough doom to probably kill our visitors 10 times over and carried on with the rest of our evening relaxing with a couple glasses of wine. Doom smells soo bad and we sprayed it everywhere in the hallway and outside. The warnings also make one think twice about being exposed to the stuff too… One thing about Africa I respect is how they place cancer and health problem warnings in large bold letters on all your beer, cigarette, and chemical cans. We probably would have settled for total natural living system extermination around the house at one point.
We were both impressed to see how the ants pile up their dead to be carried away. I thought it would be good to leave the dead ants as an example of what happens once one enters our house, but apparently if you ever find yourself in this situation, move them away from the house where their fellow ants cannot smell them. It just keeps the ants coming and exploring while burring their dead.
I learned from Erica that in Zambia you have to be extremely careful with ants and there are stories of people being swarmed and eaten alive, houses being stripped of all food, and even dead animal bodies being taken care of within minutes if you just leave them out for the ants to take care of.
It took a couple of days to finally deter the ants from entering our house…
We finally googled how to deal with ants from my internet stick and in the process learned ants do not like the smell of soaps. We had 5 different varieties of laundry and dish soap to choose from, and we utilized all of them along with more doom. We laid lines of soap by the door, around the front porch, and left a soapy water residue in the hallway. The chemist in Erica was in full bloom spreading around all the different soaps and reading the labels hoping something would match the “boric acid” that would kill them.
The problem seems to be under control now and apparently, ants are seasonal here in Namibia and move around a lot. During the winter time, they must look for warmer homes. I’ll see about sharing photos Erica took. They are impressive.
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So, after a week of Strategic Planning and assisting with the Northern Great Plains final recap meeting, Erica and I figured it was time to go explore Namibia and leave Windhoek for awhile. When I can share more details about the meeting, I’ll be sure to spread the word about this great program and everyone’s collective recap experiences. The NGP WWF meeting did go extremely well, there were big smiles on everyone’s faces, and it sparked new energy for everyone to rethink about their ecotourism projects back home in the Northern Great Plains.
I especially enjoyed the strategic meeting. I’m so new to the program and it was nice to see everything broken down into small pieces, evaluated, and re-amped to meet new huge organization goals. This experience will pay off big time for me in the future and highlighted other WWF Namibia goals that focus on the economic side I want to continue studying in grad school. I also learned so much about the other initiatives in WWF I’m just learning about. IT’s incredible to me to hear such amazing conservation stories at large scales going unnoticed by the critical masses.
Its safe to say, Namibia leads the world in conservation, while providing many benefits to communal areas and freehold farms. Where else can see wildlife numbers growing in dramatic strides while translocationing rhinos away from areas where they’ve been guarded by guides? Great networking among various levels of government, NGO, and community governments have produced some of the best conserved areas in the world. It’s a beautiful system.
Erica and I both quickly decided to go to Swakopmund for the weekend with plans of doing photography, dolphin viewing, duning, eating great seafood, and shopping.

On our way we took the scenic desert tour route that is 3 hours longer vs. the high way route. It was both our first time driving on the opposite side of the road without seasoned Namibia drivers escorting us around. Erica did a fine job and the only thing we kept laughing about was when we were turning, she’d hit the windshield wiper every time instead of the blinker [everything is opposite]. We had time to stop and take some great photographs of the area. We crossed over a few mountains before we reached the veld and finally the ocean!
We found a great hostel called the Desert Sky and the owner is so nice and blunt about what is worth seeing and doing in Swakopmund. When one walks into her main lobby [almost the living room of her house] you see posters of desert tours, dolphin and whale trips, sky diving, sand boarding, and many adrenaline activities. I was so excited about what awaited us in the morning.
We booked two spots for the dolphin ride the next morning that included lunch, champing, and fresh oysters! We then proceeded to head to a local meat house for diner and found out it was closed due to some holiday, and luckily we found two couples from South Africa heading to a place called The Lighthouse. Erica quickly struck up conversation and we decided it sounded like a good diner option for us, especially when we were already going to be eating late.
The South Africans invited us to join them for diner and I was stoked they did. The food was absolutely amazing. One of our goals was to eat fresh seafood and did we ever. We tanked up on two great seafood based dishes, enjoyed great red wine from no other place than South Africa, and had very interesting conversation.
The woman sitting next to me was very open to discussing her personal experiences with apartheid in South Africa. There is so much I wish I could write about from just talking to her alone, but what struck me the most was how she told me about crying as a little girl when the police would drive by looking for Africans in places where they were not spouse to be. Their gardener was black and she told me her family never believed in the apartheid system at all. We also talked about the World Cup, health care, and the violence problems in South Africa.
Our dolphin tour the following morning was nice. We heard reports right whales were in the area and making an early appearance, but we weren’t lucky this time. We were treated to pet seals doing tricks on the boat, many shorebirds flying right by the boat, mola mola fish, sea lions, and of course dolphins.
The dolphins were tough to photograph and see because they would swim right by the hull of the boat. The sea loins were fun and live in large colonies. When we found them, many were sunbathing on the shore and in the water with their feet sticking up in the air. There were many cute small cubs crawling around with their mothers or a baby sitter.
After the tour, I finally bought my first “tourist” gift after the tour and it’s a beautiful wooden elephant with a baby elephant by the trunk. It’s the first I’ve seen of its kind and decided I better pick it up. I’m becoming a good negotiator now too!
Swakopmund has many great shopping areas. Many of the places have local sculptures, crafts, cloth, and gems. I’ve found many good fabrics I hope to collect and bring to my grandmother back in the states to be made into quilts. So many of the hand made pieces need to have a higher price for the amount of work that goes into each piece. One of the shopping highlights was a window shopping experience in an old antique shop. There was a nice mix of German and African articles including many OLD masks lining the walls. One was made out of an elephant foot! The place smelled horrible at times, but it was nice to look around and see so many artifacts.
Our dolphin tour went into the afternoon, so we just decided to continue walking around town and seeing the ocean before heading to the Tug Boat, which is another great place to eat seafood right on the shore. We made some reservations and enjoyed some espresso coffee on the beach. Later on, we walked down to the beach to take pictures of a lovely sunset. Please see the posted links.
On Sunday, we decided to throw ourselves out of a plane over the beautiful Swakopmund sand dunes and ocean. What better place to jump out of a plane. Its surprising how we went through just a 15 minute talk about sky diving. I was expecting a full day of lessons before we jumped. Halfway through the talk we learned the winds changed and it was not safe to jump. We were so disappointed and decided to go explore the dunes and Walvis Bay [close city south of Swak].
The dunes reminded me of our ranch in the sand hills. The formations are the same and they just lack grass. We saw many people “boarding” down the dunes much like our snowboarders in the mountain states. We walked up to the top of one dune, took a few pictures, and enjoyed the nice view. It was amazing to see a huge ocean on one side and a dry desert sand dune area with no water.
As we were driving to Walvis, my cell phone rang and it was Craig from the sky diving company asking if we’d still like to jump –the winds had changed! We quickly grabbed a few groceries and lunch at a grocery store and drove back to Swak to jump out of a plane. We drove for a few minutes out to the run way, suited up, the 260 Cesna landed, and my halter was so tight on my groin area, I could barley walk straight!
I was surprisingly calm during our climb to 10,000 feet. I figured in this situation, if things did go wrong with the plane, we would have parachutes and guys who have jumped 10,000 plus times! There were 6 people in the plane including the two guys who were going to video and photograph our diving experience.
When it was time to jump… things were looking pretty small down on earth’s surface. Mias, my trainer, showed me the 10000 feet mark on his wrist watch and I was like… oh damn… lol. We strapped up and one has never been so tightly strapped to another human –ever. The door was opened and a rush of cold air filled the cab.
Its important to note during skydiving that exiting the plane is one of the most critical moments of one’s experiences and your back needs to be arched, arms need to be on your chest, and your legs need to bend back and kick your instructors butt. How many times can one kick their instructor’s butt?
When the door is open and there is a parachute tied to your back, there is no turning back and it was surprisingly easy to make myself jump out. Craig jumped out just ahead of me so he could film and photograph my free fall experience. At 10,000 feet and the laws of physics holding, one has 30 seconds of freefall which means 30 seconds of being like an astronaught. The noise is incredible. Our trainers warned us you wouldn’t be able to hear any voice till the parachute was pulled. FREAKY. But before you jump they quickly reminded you of everything you need to know about jumping out of a plane, so asking questions during freefall is not necessary.
What a rush. I can’t begin to describe the feeling and every time I look at the photos I experience butterflies. I did manage to pull off one spin and quickly became jealous of birds being able to fly. It was a beautiful experience.
We pulled the chute at 5,000 feet, which is twice the legal limit in Namibia. It was neat to see how quickly my cameraman dropped when our chute opened up and slammed on the freefalling breaks. At this point I could see Erica falling and waved. I could finally take off my tight goggles and talk to my trainer. The landing went well and the trick to landing is to pretend you’re skiing. Plus, it helps landing in a sandy desert. If Erica were in the Olympics, she would have scored a 10 for a perfect landing. She landed it just like a toothpick.
Sky diving rocks and I would do it again in a heart beat.
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I had an enjoyable weekend with my colleague Keith, who has been recently hired as the new tourism marketing dude at WWF. He’s been to 101 countries and has worked for well over a year in 25 of them. His experiences and stories are priceless and only motivates me to travel. We traveled south of Windhoek to the Hardap dam region to explore future fishing areas for his sons when they arrive in Namibia next month. I’ll blog more about this in my next blog. You’ll see from the photo links I was able to finally see cheetahs. They’re domesticated kitties, but some of the photos look like they’re in the wild.
Thank-you for reading. Have a great week!
A. E. Price